The present invention relates generally to GPS-based vehicle guidance systems and more particularly to a method and apparatus for creating curved swath paths that define a desired swath pattern to cover a field.
Tractors and other off-road work vehicles in the agricultural, mining and construction industries have typically operated with manual steering by the operator. Recent changes in control systems and the development of satellite-based navigation (GPS) systems, including those incorporating differential correction systems, have allowed tractors to operate in semi-automatic or fully automatic steering modes. Combining satellite navigation and ground-based navigation input signals precisely identifying vehicle position and speed with sophisticated on-board vehicle electronic control systems allow the tractor to steer itself with a high degree of accuracy when traversing terrain. The result is that precision farming practices are transitioning from a luxury to a necessity, capable of improving efficiency and yield in common farming operations, such as tilling, seeding, fertilizing, spraying and harvesting.
To provide this control, the prior art teaches using satellite positioning information by an on-board vehicle navigation control system to accurately determine and control a vehicle's position while operating in a field. The operator will typically enter the planned route of the tractor, or let the control system determine the most efficient route. The control methods are well known in the art, and may involve multiple position transmitters or receivers, with various signals used to derive vehicle location, elevation, direction of travel (vehicle heading), attitude, and speed.
The task of precision guidance of an agricultural vehicle involves not only accurately determining vehicle position in a field, but also defining an efficient array of paths to be followed by the vehicle that will, in conjunction with the swath of an associated implement, create an overall swath pattern that efficiently and effectively covers the crop area of a field. The pattern must be located and oriented on the field, and the physical characteristics and limitations of the vehicle and coupled implement must be identified and provided to the navigation system. Implement or header width, location of the implement or header with respect to the vehicle, and limitations on vehicle and associated implement movement, such as minimum turning radius, must also be considered. With this information it is possible to define a series of swath paths for the vehicle to travel in an attempt to cover all cultivatable portions of a field without unnecessary gaps or overlaps.
Calculating the series of paths needed to cover an area without substantial gaps or overlaps is relatively straightforward when straight paths can be used; however, not all fields can be covered in this manner. Many fields require the use of paths having a curvature that varies along at least some portion of its length, whether to follow irregularly shaped boundaries, avoid obstacles within the field follow topographic contours of the ground, implement agronomic farming practices, or to contour the ground for irrigation. Such conditions preclude a complete reliance on geometrically predefined paths, such as straight lines or constant radius curves. In order to provide generally equally spaced swaths, the path of each adjacent swath must change slightly compared to the prior swath path as the vehicle moves generally transversely across the field (i.e., from one swath to the next) the radius of each curved portion of the swath path varies slightly from the adjacent swath path.
Vehicle navigation systems must be able to store and retrieve swath path information as well as determine new adjacent swath paths from a baseline swath path or create new swath paths from defined starting and ending positions. The number of swath paths to be stored and/or determined increases as the size of the field increases. For swath paths that include variable curvature along their length, the number of positional data points necessary to fully define the swath path between starting and ending points is significantly increased compared to using only starting and ending position points to create straight-line paths. The systems must also quickly present swath path and control information to the operator in an easily understood and useful manner, which requires computational efficiency. As the vehicle operator positions the vehicle near the start of a swath path and prepares to engage the vehicle navigation system, the system must quickly determine if a swath path has been stored in system memory or can be calculated from a swath path stored in system memory and then direct the vehicle to the closest, presumably most appropriate path. If no swath paths are stored in the system memory data exists, then the system must alert the operator and direct the recording of a new swath path or allow the operator to provide a stored swath path from another memory source (i.e., change the removable memory media to one having stored swath path information). The size and arrangement of some fields is such that manually traversing and recording a new swath path is both inconvenient and inefficient, especially if only a single end position on a straight-line path is needed and the opposing side of the field is far from the vehicle's present location.
It would be a great advantage to provide a method and apparatus for creating curved swath patterns for use by a vehicle navigation system that streamlines data storage requirements to reduce demands on the storage and computational elements of the navigation system thereby reducing hardware expense of the vehicle guidance system. Further advantages would be realized if the method and apparatus for creating curved swath patterns for use by a vehicle navigation system was capable of storing path positional data for new paths while the system was engaged in other activities, such as automatic guidance along existing paths so that additional, unproductive travel to memorize points on another path is minimized. Still further advantages would be realized if the method and apparatus recognized vehicle/implement limitations in following a defined path and adjusted such paths accordingly. Still further advantages would be realized if the apparatus were capable of receiving periodic adjustments to the position signal and accurately altering generated paths to account for signal drift. These and other advantages are provided by the method and vehicle guidance system described below.